Economy, War, or Immigration: Which Will Win Out In November?

Economy, War, or Immigration: Which Will Win Out In November?
by Nathan Poole, Columnist

February 1, 2008

Columnist Nathan Poole As I have been watching the primaries start to heat up, I have found myself wondering which hotbed issue will become the most important to the media...er, public, when the general election rolls around in November. Will it be the economy? That's been bandied about quite a bit the last few days. How about the war(s) our young people have been fighting -virtually on their own-for the past several years? Either issue could rightfully be the one American voters use to justify their votes for the U.S. Presidency. But my money is on immigration.

Immigration has always been a volatile issue in this country. Any time you have ever wanted to ruffle a couple of feathers or capture the attention of a certain segment of the American public, all you had to was to mention immigration. Throw the inflammatory term "illegal" in front of it, and you had yourself a bona-fide, fired up, ready-to-fight audience.

I know this first hand, because I wrote an inflammatory column about immigration a few years ago. I was writing regularly for TAP, and I enjoyed the attention my columns were beginning to garner. The more I wrote, however, the harder it seemed to become to entice the readers. I began, to my own detriment, to write columns that I didn't believe in. I simply tried to be funny-which I certainly was not-and completely ridiculous-which I was way too good at. The end result is that I was writing irrelevant, unfunny, and hurtful pieces, and I made myself a non-entity in the process.

More importantly, what I did was forget about the real issue at the heart of immigration, legal or otherwise. That issue is people. As hard as it may be to comprehend, immigrants are people. Americans-specifically, white Americans-like to gloss over or even ignore altogether this simple truth. Immigrants are people like you or me. They have families, dreams, and fears. They come to this country not for free medical care, but for the chance-the mere opportunity-for a better life.

The question of legal or illegal is not as important as the right-controlled media would have you believe. This country has a long history of demonizing immigrants. Whether or not the immigrants had legal status never mattered to those who would use them to strike fear in the hearts of ordinary Americans. The people in power in our country have hated the French, the Irish, the Italians, the Germans, the Chinese, the Eastern Europeans, the Japanese, the Vietnamese, the Jews, the Catholics, and the Muslims, just to name a few. For a nation founded on religious and political freedom, the second and third generations of our immigrant Americans sure have always found a way to vilify those coming to America in search of just those ideals.

When the economy takes a turn for the worse, we need somebody to blame. When jobs dry up or are shipped elsewhere, we need somebody to blame. When our war doesn't go the way our leaders have promised, we need somebody to blame. We could blame our elected officials, but then we would have to blame ourselves, wouldn't we? It's so much easier to blame immigrants.

The primaries will soon be over, and two candidates will be standing on the greatest stage in the world, waiting for America to tell them which issue is the most important to them. Which do you think it will be? My money's on immigration. ***

A native of San Antonio, Texas and a veteran of the United States Air Force, Nathan Poole is a teacher living in Southern California.

Photo of the author courtesy of staff files